ROADTRIP! – No word in the English language makes me me shudder like this one. Smells, visions and memories from childhood come streaming back, making me want to curl up in a fetal position and rock back and forth violently while sucking my thumb when this word is uttered.

I come from a large family, and cramming 7 kids and 2 adults in a 5 passenger Japanese car (don’t forget luggage) was a common occurrence for us. This was back in the day when child safety seats and seat belts had not yet been invented, or enforced.

A little background:

We lived in a podunk little backwoods town and the closest "Metropolis", was over 500 kilometers, which equated to 10-12 hrs due to bad roads. We would journey to the big city every summer to get school clothes, visit relatives, and see the sights. This was also a business trip. Mom and Dad had a small grocery store back then, and Dad was always searching out new products to sell in the store. He would buy samplings of new items from the big stores in the big city and put them on our shelves back home to see if they would sell locally.

The road to Metropolis was called "South Road". It was mostly a two lane road riddled with potholes, switchbacks, hairpin turns, road construction and the occasional washout (roads destroyed or carried away by heavy floods). This was THE only road from the North to the Southern part of the island, and because of this, Diesel exhaust belching commercial vehicles plied up and down its length like confused Salmon to deliver goods and passengers to the rest of the island.

Back to the story:

In an effort to get on the road early to beat the traffic Mom would boil eggs and hotdogs in the wee hours of the morning and put some boxed orange juice on ice in a cooler. She would then wake each of us up, have us change into comfortable clothes for the trip and they would both hustle us into the waiting vehicle and bed us back down in specific locations, which was dependent on our sizes, ages, and tolerance for one another. We’d be on the road by 4 or 5 am and Dad would drive for about an hour or two before some of us would start waking up looking for something to eat.

The fun begins….(not really):

Mom would start handing out paper towels with a hot dogs and boiled eggs to each kid. After eating we’d be thirsty so out would come the triangular juice boxes we called "Tetra Paks". They tasted like unsweetened fake orange juice concentrate.

I’m a poor traveler to begin with. An inner ear problem necessitates me to be able to see the road so I can face my head in the general direction of a turn. Looking in one direction while turning in another causes me to get dizzy. Compound this with sitting in the back seat (can’t see the road) with a "hey look at that!" head snap, the smell of boiled eggs, hotdogs, diesel fumes, freshly paved asphalt, Dad’s jackrabbit pothole avoidance slalom, the country’s summertime temperatures and humidity…..it was just too much for my poor stomach to handle.

Sometimes I’d get my head out the window fast enough, sometimes I wouldn’t. Either way, and at those speeds, there was always the dreaded "splashback". Dad would grumble and pull over and I’d get out quickly and let my stomach retch the rest of  breakfast up. While the nasty, fake orange juice’s acidity burned my nasal passages Mom would clean me up with some lemon scented wet towelettes, make me rinse out my mouth, give me a mint or some gum, and off we’d go again, to the tune of 6 siblings calling me names and chiding me for my weakness. Woo-hoo, only 8 more hours till we get there.

So at this point I just added 3 new "scents" (lemon, mint, puke) to the car that could trigger another event. This is about the same time that the digesting boiled eggs and hotdogs started making themselves known in the car’s cabin. More "scents" added on their part = more fountain action on mine. It was at this point in the trip that "Pull over Dad! He’s gonna blow again!" would be shouted repeatedly for the rest of the trip. By Lunchtime I’d be dry heaving; Time to reload. More new smells, more new projectiles – yay! This scenario was replayed several times a year for well over a decade. I AM SO GLAD I’M ALL GROWN UP!!!!

People have the misconception that I am a control freak because I insist on driving during long trips. Oh contraire! They don’t understand that I NEED to be behind the wheel for the sake of the rest of the vehicle’s occupants. It’s been many, many years since the last time I emulated the Diet Pepsi/Mentos phenomenon, and if I play my cards right, it’s going to stay that way.

The "Silver Lining":

It wasn’t all bad. Because of my solid reputation of being a bad traveler I always got a window seat, No one’s arm or elbow was resting on my stomach, and everyone always gave me a wide berth. When you have a hair trigger stomach, while in hot, cramped, fetid quarters, that’s a good thing.

Just for the record, now that I’m an adult, my own family goes on road trips all the time. Five people – air conditioned, DVD player/video game havin’, seven passenger vehicle. No hotdogs, boiled eggs or paint stripper fake orange juice allowed. My kids will never know how good they have it.

Mom and Dad….I forgive you. 

I have always heard funny stories from my Mom, Dad, Uncles and Aunts regarding life in the Philippines circa 1945-1955. This was always one of my favorites.

After World War II large American and English companies, like International Harvester, Texaco and Smith Bell, started moving into the Philippines for commercial gain. The tiny little seaside villages had no shipping ports, or airports to speak of so the companies contracted with the locals to build gigantic scaffolding, called ‘Pantalans’ in the local vernacular, out of local materials (Bamboo, Rattan and Buri). These were solid Bamboo structures used to load, and unload, cargo from ships. The locals were well versed in the use of these materials since all their homes were made in the same fashion. They were simple folk who lived without everyday amenities we take for granted like running water, indoor plumbing, toilet paper, or electricity.

Everything went well for the first few months after the structure’s completion, but after a short time the scaffolding inexplicably collapsed into the sea. The large companies re-contracted with the locals to rebuild new scaffolding quickly until the scaffolding’s concrete counterparts were finished. Oddly enough, even the new scaffolding ended up falling apart after a few months, and so began the vicious cycle of rebuilding and falling apart. None of the well schooled engineers, with scads of degrees, could figure out what was causing these usually sturdy structures to collapse.

It finally came to light that families living in the local area would meander down to the beach after dinner and climb the scaffolding and, with pants down around their ankles, would perch on the different levels of bamboo beams, hang their rear ends off the side to do their “business”. Stories and conversations were shared in the smoky darkness as the glowing red tips of the grownups’ cigarettes flitted about like fireflies. Sometimes people would even bring guitars and sing and enjoy each other’s company, all while relieving themselves. After they were done, people would twist off pieces of the Buri or Rattan lashing and use it to clean their posteriors (don’t ask me how). Month after month of this “Community Togetherness” depleted the necessary lashings a few inches at a time until the weakened structure would eventually succumb to the laws of Physics and Gravity and plunge into the sea.

Eventually, the concrete piers and docks were completed, the last of the great Bamboo structures fell one last time and the evening escapades of the locals came to an end. All that is left of the Pantalans are these hilarious stories passed down to me over the generations. To this day my Uncle still cannot recount this story without breaking out into laughter due to its absurdity.

I’m all for family bonding, and even neighborhood unity, but I would have to draw the line well before community crapping.